Jackson was born on 31 October 1961 in Wellington[4] and was raised at the nearby coastal town of Pukerua Bay.[5] His parents - Joan (née Ruck),[6][7] a factory worker and housewife, and William "Bill" Jackson, a wages clerk - were both immigrants from England.[8][9]

Bill Jackson was a veteran of the Siege of Malta in World War II. As a child, Jackson was a keen film fan, growing up on Ray Harryhausen films, as well as finding inspiration in the television series Thunderbirds and Monty Python's Flying Circus. After a family friend gave the Jacksons a Super 8 cine-camera with Peter in mind, he began making short films with his friends. Jackson has long cited King Kong as his favourite film, and around the age of nine he attempted to remake it using his own stop-motion models.[10] Also, as a child Jackson made a WWII epic called "The Dwarf Patrol" seen on the Bad Taste bonus disc which featured his first special effect of poking pinholes in the film for gun shots, and a James Bond spoof named Coldfinger.[11] Most notable though was a 20-minute short called The Valley, which won him a special prize because of the shots he used.

In school, Jackson expressed no interest in sports. His classmates also remember him wearing a duffle coat with "an obsession verging on religious". He had no formal training in film-making, but learned about editing, special effects and make-up largely through his own trial and error. As a young adult, Jackson discovered the work of author J. R. R. Tolkien after watching The Lord of the Rings (1978), an animated film by Ralph Bakshi that was a part-adaptation of Tolkien's fantasy trilogy.[12] When he was 16 years old, Jackson left school and began working full-time as a photo-engraver for a Wellington newspaper, The Evening Post. For the seven years he worked there, Jackson lived at home with his parents so he could save as much money as possible to spend on film equipment. After two years of work Jackson bought a 16 mmcamera, and began shooting a film that later became Bad Taste.[13]

Jackson has long cited several films as influences. It is well known that Jackson has a passion for King Kong, often citing it as his favourite film and as the film that inspired him early in his life. Jackson recalls attempting to remake King Kong when he was 12. At the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con International, while being interviewed alongside Avatar and Titanic director James Cameron, Jackson said certain films gave him a "kick". He mentioned Martin Scorsese's crime films Goodfellas and Casino, remarking on "something about those particular movies and the way Martin Scorsese just fearlessly rockets his camera around and has shot those films that I can watch those movies and feel inspired."[14] Jackson said the 1970 film Waterloo inspired him in his youth.[15]

Jackson's first feature was Bad Taste, a haphazard fashion splatter comedy, which included many of Jackson's friends acting and working on it for free. Shooting was normally done in the weekends since Jackson was then working full-time. Bad Taste is about aliens that come to earth with the intention of turning humans into food. Jackson had two acting roles including a famous scene in which he fights himself on top of a cliff. The film was finally completed thanks to a late injection of finance from the New Zealand Film Commission, after Jim Booth, the body's executive director, became convinced of Jackson's talent (Booth later left the Commission to become Jackson's producer). In May 1987, Bad Taste was unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival, where rights to the film quickly sold to twelve countries.[citation needed]

Around this time, Jackson began working on writing a number of film scripts, in varied collaborative groupings with playwright Stephen Sinclair, writer Fran Walsh and writer/actor Danny Mulheron. Walsh would later become his life partner.[1] Some of the scripts from this period, including a sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street, have never been made into movies; the proposed zombie film Braindead underwent extensive rewrites.[1]

Jackson's next film to see release was Meet the Feebles (1989), co-written by the four writers mentioned above. An ensemble musical comedy starring Muppet-style puppets, Meet the Feebles originally began as a short film intended for television, but was rapidly expanded into a full-length film after unexpected enthusiasm from Japanese investors, and the collapse of Braindead, six weeks before filming. Begun on a very low budget, Meet the Feebles went weeks over schedule. Jackson stated of his second feature-length film, "It's got a quality of humour that alienates a lot of people.. It's very black, very satirical, very savage."[16]Feebles marked Jackson's first collaboration with special effects team Richard Taylor and Tania Rodger, who would later work on all Jackson's movies. Jackson's next release was the horror comedy Braindead (1992) (released in North America as Dead Alive).[17]

Released in 1994 after Jackson won a race to bring the story to the screen, Heavenly Creatures marked a major change for Jackson in terms of both style and tone. The film is based on the real Parker–Hulme murder case in which two teenage girls in 1950s Christchurch became close friends and later murdered the mother of one of the girls. Walsh persuaded him that the events had the makings of a movie; Jackson has been quoted saying that the film "only got made" because of her enthusiasm for the subject matter.[18] The film's fame coincided with the New Zealand media tracking down the real-life Juliet Hulme, who now writes books under the name Anne Perry. Jackson hired actresses Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet in the roles of Parker and Hulme. Heavenly Creatures received considerable critical acclaim, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay and making top ten of the year lists in Time, The Guardian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The New Zealand Herald. The success of Heavenly Creatures won Jackson attention from US company Miramax, who promoted the film vigorously in America and signed the director to a first-look deal.[citation needed]

The following year, in collaboration with Wellington film-maker Costa Botes, Jackson co-directed the mockumentaryForgotten Silver (1995). This ambitious made-for-television piece told the story of New Zealand film pioneer Colin McKenzie, who had supposedly invented colour film and 'talkies', and attempted an epic film of Salome before being forgotten by the world. Though the programme played in a slot normally reserved for drama, no other warning was given that it was fictionalised and many viewers were outraged at discovering Colin McKenzie had never existed.[19][20] The number of people who believed the increasingly improbable story provides testimony to Jackson and Botes' skill at playing on New Zealand's national myth of a nation of innovators and forgotten trail-blazers.[21]

The success of Heavenly Creatures helped pave the way for Jackson's first big budget Hollywood film, The Frighteners starring Michael J. Fox, in 1996. Jackson was given permission to make this comedy/horror film entirely in New Zealand despite being set in a North American town. This period was a key one of change for both Jackson and Weta Workshop, the special effects company—born from the one-man contributions of George Port to Heavenly Creatures — with which Jackson is often associated. Weta, initiated by Jackson and key collaborators, grew rapidly during this period to incorporate both digital and physical effects, make-up and costumes, the first two areas normally commanded by Jackson collaborator Richard Taylor.[citation needed]

The Frighteners was regarded as a commercial failure. Some critics[who?] expressed disappointment that it displayed little of the anarchistic humor of Jackson's early movies and that the script felt underdeveloped.[citation needed] In February 1997, Jackson launched legal proceedings against the New Zealand Listener magazine for defamation, over a review of The Frighteners which claimed that the film was "built from the rubble of other people's movies".[22] In the end, the case was not pursued further. Around this time Jackson's remake of King Kong was shelved by Universal Studios, partly because of Mighty Joe Young and Godzilla, both giant monster movies, that had already gone into production. Universal feared it would be thrown aside by the two higher budget movies.[citation needed]

This period of transition seems not to have been entirely a happy one; it also marked one of the high points of tension between Jackson and the New Zealand Film Commission since Meet the Feebles had gone over-budget earlier in his career. Jackson has claimed the Commission considered firing him from Feebles, though the NZFC went on to help fund his next three films. In 1997, the director submitted a lengthy criticism of the Commission for a magazine supplement meant to celebrate the body's 20th anniversary, criticising what he called inconsistent decision-making by inexperienced board members. The magazine felt that the material was too long and potentially defamatory to publish in that form; a shortened version of the material went on to appear in Metro magazine.[23] In the Metro article Jackson criticized the Commission over funding decisions concerning a film he was hoping to executive produce, but refused to drop a client-confidentiality clause that allowed them to publicly reply to his criticisms.

Jackson won the rights to film Tolkien's epic in 1997 after meeting with producer Saul Zaentz. Originally working with Miramax towards a two-film production, Jackson was later pressured to render the story as a single film, and finally overcame a tight deadline by making a last-minute deal with New Line, who were keen on a trilogy.[citation needed]

Principal photography stretched from 11 October 1999 to 22 December 2000 with extensive location filming across New Zealand. With the benefit of extended post-production and extra periods of shooting before each film's release, the series met huge success and sent Jackson's popularity soaring. The Return of the King itself met with huge critical acclaim, winning eleven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film was the first of the fantasy film genre to win the award for Best Picture and was the second sequel to win Best Picture (the first being The Godfather Part II). Jackson's mother, Joan, died three days before the release of the first movie in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. There was a special showing of the film after her funeral.[24]

Following The Return of the King, Jackson lost a large amount of weight –over 50 pounds (23 kg) to the point of being unrecognisable to some fans. In The Daily Telegraph, he attributed his weight loss to his diet. He said, "I just got tired of being overweight and unfit, so I changed my diet from hamburgers to yogurt and muesli and it seems to work."[25]

Universal Studios signed Peter Jackson for a second time to remake the 1933 classic King Kong—the film that inspired him to become a film director as a child.[26] He was reportedly paid a fee of US$20 million upfront, the highest salary ever paid to date to a film director in advance of production, against a 20 percent take of the box-office rentals (the portion of the price of the ticket that goes to the film distributor, in this case Universal). The film was released on 14 December 2005, and grossed around US$550 million worldwide.[27]

Jackson completed an adaptation of Alice Sebold's bestseller, The Lovely Bones, which was released in the United States on 11 December 2009.[28] Jackson has said the film was a welcome relief from his larger-scale epics. The storyline's combination of fantasy aspects and themes of murder bears some similarities to Heavenly Creatures. The film ended up receiving generally mixed reviews and middling box office returns. It currently holds 32% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes.

Jackson's involvement in the making of a film version of The Hobbit has a long and chequered history. In November 2006, a letter from Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh stated that due to an ongoing legal dispute between Wingnut Films (Jackson's production company) and New Line Cinema, Jackson would not be directing the film.[29] New Line Cinema's head Robert Shaye commented that Jackson "...will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working at the company...".[30] This prompted an online call for a boycott of New Line Cinema,[31] and by August 2007 Shaye was trying to repair his working relationship.[32] On 18 December 2007, it was announced that Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema had reached agreement to make two prequels, both based on The Hobbit, and to be released in 2012 and 2013 with Jackson as a writer and executive producer and Guillermo del Toro directing.[33][34]

In early 2010, del Toro dropped out due to production delays[35] and a month later Jackson was back in negotiations to direct The Hobbit;[36] and on 15 October he was finalised as the director[37][38]—with New Zealand confirmed as the location a couple of weeks later.[39]

The film started production on 20 March 2011. On 30 July 2012, Jackson announced on his Facebook page that the two planned 'Hobbit' movies would be expanded into a trilogy. The third film will not act as a bridge between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings films, but would continue to expand The Hobbit story by using material found in the Lord of the Rings Appendices.[40]

Jackson had talked of producing films for others as early as 1995, but a number of factors slowed developments in this regard, including the failure of Jack Brown Genius (1995). After he became a force in Hollywood, he was set to produce a $128 million movie version of the science fiction video game series Halo, but the project went on hold when financial backers withdrew their support.[41][42] Instead Jackson worked with Halo director Neill Blomkamp on science fiction project District 9, which proved a box office hit and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture.[43] Jackson was set to produce a remake of The Dam Busters, to be directed by longtime Weta designer Christian Rivers. Stephen Fry has written a screenplay.[44][45] Originally scheduled for 2009–10, the project has been postponed.[citation needed]

Jackson has also won the rights to a film adaptation of the fantasy novel series Temeraire, a novel about dragons being used in combat in the Napoleonic Wars and a dragon named Temeraire and his captain, Will Laurence, written by Naomi Novik. It remains to be seen if he will direct it.[46] In recent years, Jackson has also directed a short film titled Crossing the Line to test a new model of digital cinema camera, the RED ONE. The film takes place during World War I, and was shot in two days. "Crossing the Line" was shown at NAB 2007 (the USA National Association of Broadcasters). Clips of the film can be found at Reduser.net.[47]

Jackson and his newly formed studio Wingnut Interactive were working on an unrevealed project being developed by Microsoft Game Studios in collaboration with Bungie Studios. The project has been officially titled Halo: Chronicles but beyond speculation little else was known about its nature. He was to be the executive producer on a Halo film, developed and released by Universal Studios and 20th Century Fox but in October 2006 the film was postponed indefinitely. The film was never officially cancelled. In June 2008 Peter Jackson commented that, "With upcoming developments (Halo: Chronicles), I wouldn't know when to expect a movie, and I'm the producer." Jackson spent $5 million to purchase 20 hectares of land in Wairarapa, a property containing a mansion, private lake, tunnel and the interior of Bag End from The Lord of the Rings. In 2009, he purchased a Gulfstream G550 jet; his total net worth is estimated by National Business Review at NZ$450 million.[48] Jackson owns an aircraft restoration and manufacturing company, The Vintage Aviator, which is dedicated to World War I and World War II fighter planes among other planes from the 1920s and 1930s. He is chairman of the Omaka Aviation Heritage Trust, which hosts a biennial air show.[49]

In late December 2009, Jackson announced his interest on the movie adaption of the novel Mortal Engines.[50] In April 2010 it was confirmed that he would be both director and producer of the project.[citation needed]

In December 2011, Spielberg said that a sequel would be made. It is rumoured to be based on The Seven Crystal Balls and Prisoners of the Sun.[51] Spielberg said that the Thompson detectives would "have a much bigger role". The sequel would be produced by Spielberg and directed by Jackson.[51]Kathleen Kennedy said the script might be done by February or March 2012 and motion-captured in summer 2012, so that the movie would be on track to be released by Christmas 2014 or mid-2015.[52] In February 2012, Spielberg said that a story outline for the sequel had been completed. In December 2012, Jackson said that the Tintin schedule was to shoot performance-capture in 2013, aiming for a release in 2015.[53] On March 12, 2013, Spielberg said, "Don't hold me to it, but we're hoping the film will come out around Christmas-time in 2015. We know which books we're making, we can't share that now but we're combining two books which were always intended to be combined by Herge."[citation needed]

In December 2014, Peter Jackson said that the Tintin sequel would be made "at some point soon", although he intended to focus on directing two New Zealand films before that.[54]

Jackson was set to make games with Microsoft Game Studios, a partnership announced on 27 September 2006, at X06.[55] Specifically, Jackson and Microsoft were teaming together to form a new studio called Wingnut Interactive.[56] In collaboration with Bungie Studios, he was to co-write, co-design and co-produce a new game taking place in the Halo universe – tentatively called Halo: Chronicles. On 27 July 2009, in an interview about his new movie (as producer) District 9, he announced that Halo: Chronicles had been cancelled, while Microsoft confirmed that the game is "on hold". Jackson's game studio Wingnut Interactive is now at work on original intellectual property.[57]

Jackson has given NZ$500,000 to stem cell research.[58] He purchased a church in the Wellington suburb of Seatoun for about $10 million, saving it from demolition.[59] He also contributes his expertise to 48HOURS, a New Zealand film-making competition, through annually selecting 3 "Wildcards" for the National Final.

Jackson, a World War I aviation enthusiast, is chair of the 14–18 Aviation Heritage Trust.[60] He donated his services and provided replica aircraft to create a 10-minute multimedia display called Over the Front for the Australian War Memorial in 2008.[61] He contributed to the defense fund for the West Memphis Three.[62] In 2011, Jackson and Walsh purchased 1 Kent Terrace, the home of BATS Theatre in Wellington, effectively securing the theatre's future.[63]

Jackson is known for his attention to detail, a habit of shooting scenes from many angles, a macabre sense of humour, and a general playfulness – the latter to the point where The Lord of the Rings conceptual designer Alan Lee jokingly remarked "the film is almost incidental really".[64]

Jackson was a noted perfectionist on the Lord of the Rings shoot, where he demanded numerous takes of scenes, requesting additional takes by repeatedly saying, "one more for luck".[65] Jackson is also renowned within the New Zealand film industry for his insistence on "coverage"—shooting a scene from as many angles as possible, giving him more options during editing.[citation needed] Jackson has been known to spend days shooting a single scene. This is evident in his work where even scenes featuring simple conversations often feature a wide array of multiple camera angles and shot-sizes as well as zooming closeups on characters' faces. One of his most common visual trademarks is shooting close-ups of actors with wide-angle lenses. He was an early user of computer enhancement technology and provided digital special effects to a number of Hollywood films by use of telecommunications and satellite links to transmit raw images and the final results across the Pacific Ocean.[citation needed]

Jackson is one of the lead actors in two of his films: in Bad Taste, he plays two characters named Derek and Robert, even engaging them both in a fight. In the mockumentary Forgotten Silver, he plays his own role.[2]

However he appears in every film he directed, mostly in cameos, just as director Alfred Hitchcock had done:[2]

In Meet the Feebles, Jackson appears as an audience member disguised as one of the aliens from Bad Taste.[citation needed]

In Braindead, he is the mortician's assistant.

In Heavenly Creatures, he is the tramp who gets kissed by Juliet Hulme.

In The Frighteners, Jackson is a biker bumped into by Frank Bannister.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Jackson plays a drunken, carrot-chomping citizen of Bree when the four hobbits are entering in town.

In The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, he plays a spear-throwing defender of Helm's Deep.

In his significant cameo in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King he is seen as the boatswain of a murderous corsair ship. This character is seen very briefly in the theatrical version. In the extended version he is onscreen for a longer period and is accidentally killed by Legolas's "warning shot". A detailed action figure of Jackson was made of this character in the same line as the rest of the Lord of the Rings toys. Jackson actually makes two cameos in Return of the King: during the scene of Shelob's Lair, where Sam's hands (i.e. Jackson's) are seen entering the shot as Shelob is wrapping Frodo in webbing. This was due to Sean Astin's temporary absence, and Jackson wanted to progress the production of the scene as much as possible, even without the actor.[66]

He has also made cameos in several films not directed by him. In the opening sequence of Hot Fuzz (2007), he played a demented man dressed as Father Christmas, who stabs Nicholas Angel (played by Simon Pegg) in the hand.[68]

Jackson's eldest son, Billy (born 1995), has made cameo appearances in almost every one of his father's films since his birth, namely The Frighteners (1996), The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, King Kong and The Lovely Bones. His daughter, Katie (born 1996), appears in all the above films except The Frighteners. His life-partner and co-writer Fran Walsh makes a short cameo in The Frighteners as a woman walking next to Cyrus and Stuar just prior the scene featuring their son Billy.[69]

Since 1994's Heavenly Creatures Peter Jackson's films have enjoyed success in the annual awards season, earning many nominations and winning several awards; The Frighteners being his only directed effort since 1994 not to be nominated for either an Oscar a BAFTA or a Golden Globe. The Lord of the Ring's trilogy is one of the most successful trilogies of all time in terms of awards, winning more Academy Awards than the Francis Ford Coppola directed Godfather Trilogy, with 2003's The Return of the King winning in all 11 categories for which it was nominated including; Best Picture, Director and Adapted Screenplay. Jackson's films have fared extremely well in the technical categories as well as the major categories, all three Lord of the Rings pictures won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in their respective years. King Kong also won the Award for visual effects. In total Jackson's directed efforts have been the most awarded films at 3 separate, the 74th, 76th and 78th, annual Academy Award ceremonies.

^Pryor, Ian (2003). Peter Jackson: From Prince of Splatter to Lord of the Rings (Paperback ed.). Random House. p. 25. ISBN978-0-7528-6970-4. Shortly before sunset on October 31, Joan Jackson gave birth to her first child at Wellington Hospital

^Cameras in Middle-earth: The Fellowship of the Ring, Special Extended Edition DVD Documentary. Actor Christopher Lee remarks about having twelve takes for one scene, before being told by Ian McKellen he did 24 takes for two lines the previous day

^As stated in the bonus material delivered with the special extended edition of Return of the King.